Calls for 'Contingency Paper Ballots' in States, Counties this November to be Paid for by Feds!

Co-Author of HAVA is Co-Sponsor of New Bill Answering Our Call for a 'LET AMERICA VOTE ACT', Makes Paper Ballots Optional to States Rather Than Mandated...But We'll Take it! Sources Say House Bill to Follow Soon!

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) introduced emergency legislation to amend the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) this afternoon to offer funding to states and counties who make 'contingency paper ballots' available to voters to be used at the voter's option instead of electronic voting systems.

The so-called contingency paper ballots are intended to be counted as normal ballots, as opposed to Provisional Ballots which must be vetted first to determine the integrity of the voter's registration. Provisional ballots are frequently counted only several days after Election Day, and often, not at all. The Senate legislation as filed, however, does not spell out the intended difference between "contingency" and "provisional" ballots specifically.

The BRAD BLOG has learned from a source currently working on similar legislation in the House, said to be filed there shortly, that the House version will include such specific language if possible to ensure such contingency ballots are counted as normal ballots on Election Night. Several Capitol Hill sources have confirmed that such legislation is currently in the works. We hope to have more details on the House version later today.

The inclusion of Dodd as a co-sponsor on the Senate legislation is no small coup, as he was one of the original co-sponsors of the HAVA legislation of 2002 which this bill would amend. Until now, he and the other bi-partisan co-sponsors of that original legislation have been reluctant to open HAVA to amendment.

The legislation, filed just after 4pm ET this afternoon, would refund state and county voting jurisdictions that offer paper ballots as an option to voters, and requires such jurisdictions post "in a conspicuous manner at the polling place, a notice stating that contingency paper ballots are available at the polling place and that a voter may request to use such a ballot at the voter's discretion."

Election integrity advocacy groups and citizens alike have been rallying members of both the U.S. House and Senate to pass such legislation since The BRAD BLOG initially called for what we had called, the "LET AMERICA VOTE ACT" last Tuesday. The act we called for would mandate emergency paper ballots at all polling places this November in light of thousands of voters having been sent away without having been able to cast a vote in primary after primary election so far this year when new electronic voting machines either malfunctioned or were otherwise unavailable.

The short Boxer/Dodd bill does not mandate the use of such ballots, but rather offers federal payment to local jurisdictions that choose to make such 'contingency paper ballots' available at either the voter's request or in the event of machine malfunction.

The bill is now being referred to informally as the "Confidence in Vote Act of 2006". It's a simple bill, three pages long in total, and is posted in full at the bottom this article. The final version of the bill to be filed momentarily (it may have already been) may be downloaded here in PDF format.

The bill introduced today is notable in no small part in that it's co-sponsored by Dodd --- one of the original co-sponsors of HAVA along with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in the Senate and Reps. Bob Ney (R-OH) and Steny Hoyer (D-MD) in the House. HAVA was the bill which had set in motion the nationwide implementation of electronic voting systems paid for by the federal government. That bill gave states and counties some $3 billion dollars for voting systems "upgrades" around the country, and has led to a panoply of problems at polls, criticism from computer scientists, security experts and non-partisan election integrity organizations.

Dodd, and the other bi-partisan co-sponsors of HAVA, including the now-disgraced lead author Ney (R-OH), have been reluctant up until now to modify the legislation in any way, despite repeated calls from Election Integrity advocates, and a host of bills filed in both the House and Senate which have not been allowed to move forward.

The BRAD BLOG has learned that Boxer and Dodd chose to make the use of "contingency paper ballots" an option to states, rather than a mandate, in hopes that it would make the bill less contentious and easier to pass in the few days left in this legislative session before the election recess.

Both touch-screen DRE's and paper based optical scan systems have spectacularly failed across the country so far this year as well, and contingency plans have been called from both Republicans and Democrats alike to have such contingency plans in place at local jurisdictions should such machines continue to fail this November.

The downside to offering these paper ballots as an option, instead of a mandate, is that some states --- such as Florida --- have provisions in place making it essentially illegal for elections directors to offer such paper ballots at the polling place. For those states, it may well be that only a federal mandate would do the job of ensuring that voters would be able to vote come hell or highwater this November.

The legendary Leon County, FL Election Director Ion Sancho had previously expressed hopes that such a bill would make it "illegal to send a properly registered voter away from the polls without allowing them to cast a vote."

The latest state to have had machine problems in their primary election, resulting in voters being turned away from the polls, or being given Provisional Ballots (which are frequently not counted at all after Election Day) was Maryland. The Republican Governor of Maryland, Bob Ehrlich, called for scrapping the state's Diebold paperless touch-screen voting systems after their September 12th primary, calling on the state to impliment Emergency Paper Balloting this November. Incidents similar to the now-infamous "Maryland Meltdown" have been occuring across the country all year in states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Arkansas, West Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, and many others.

The Boxer/Dodd legislation cites a recent call from former Republican Attorney General Richard Thornburgh and former Democratic Governor Richard Celeste to have such "backup and contingency plans that anticipate a wide range of possible failures in their electronic voting systems" this November.

With just 4, or so, legislative days left in this Congress before they break for their Election Recess, it'll be no easy feat to see the bill passed by both the House and Senate before they leave. But given the stakes, and the bi-partisan call across the country for such a measure, we hope the Congress can act with the speed appropriate for a bill so important to, at least, helping to mitigate the train wreck that our democracy may be headed for this November 7th.

UPDATE 11:12pm PT: Late, final edition of the Times now lists Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) as a co-sponsor of the legislation as well!

The complete text of the Boxer/Dodd legislation as filed this afternoon, follows in full...

109th Congress
2nd Session

To amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to reimburse jurisdictions for amounts paid or incurred in preparing, producing, and using contingency paper ballots in the November 7, 2006, Federal general election.

__________________________________

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

Mrs. Boxer (for herself and Mr. Dodd) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on

__________________________________

A BILL

To amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to reimburse jurisdictions for amounts paid or incurred in preparing, producing, and using contingency paper ballots in the November 7, 2006, Federal general election.

Be it enancted by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE

This Act may be cited as the "Confidence in Voting Act of 2006".

SECTION 2. FINDINGS.

Congress finds that a bipartisan report by former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh and former Governor Richard Celeste concluded that "it will be essential this year that jurisdictions have backup and contingency plans that anticipate a wide range of possible failures in their electronic voting systems", and that contingency paper ballots provide a sufficient backup plan for the failure of such systems.

SECTION 3. REIMBURSEMENTS FOR CONTINGENCY PAPER BALLOTS.

(a) REIMBURSEMENT. --- Part 1 of subtitle D of title II of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (42 U.S.C. 15401 et seq.) is amended by inserting after section 257 the following new section:

SEC. 257A. PAYMENTS FOR CONTINGENCY PAPER BALLOTS FOR THE 2006 GENERAL ELECTION.

"(a) IN GENERAL. --The Commission shall pay to each jurisdiction that conducts a general election on November 7, 2006, and uses a voting system other than paper ballot voting system in such election an amount equal to the documented costs paid or incurred by such jurisdiction for the preparation, production, and use of contingency paper ballots for such election, but not to exceed 75 cents for each contingency paper ballot printed by such jurisdiction for such election.

"(b) REQUIREMENTS. --- No payment shall be made under subsection (a) unless the jurisdiction --

"(1) permits an individual, upon request, to cast a vote by means of a contingency paper ballot without regard to the means of voting otherwise specified in the jurisdiction where such individual votes; and

"(2) posts, in a conspicuous manner at the polling place, a notice stating that contingency paper ballots are available at the polling place and that a voter may request to use such a ballot at the voter's discretion.

"(c) AMOUNTS. --- Such sums shall be appropriated to the Commission as necessary for payments under subsection (a)."

(b) CONFORMING AMENDMENT. --- The table of sections of the Help America Vote Act fo [sic] is amended by inserting after the item relating to section 257 the following new item:

"Sec. 257A. Payments for contingency paper ballots for the 2006 general election.".

Great work Brad and VelvetRevolution. In less than a week you guys proposed legislation and got it introduced in both houses of Congress. Not bad for five or six activists. Now lets see if it can get passed or if the Repugs will kill it so they can steal another election.

Brad, I'm sure you're all worn out from fighting so hard and for so long, and you would probably describe your efforts as the doing your civic duty, and you probaby would never call yourself a hero --- so let me do it for you: You're as fine a specimen of humanity as I've ever seen, and you're a hero (and I love you). Whatever happens with this legislation, that bright thing in you is lighting up a very dark sky.

Was hoping the above link to write your newspapers would be a bit more automatic, but by clicking on the individual newspapers, you can find their E-mail address.

Here's the letter I sent:

In the coming years, the American main stream media will come under a barrage of criticism for failing the American public uterly on information concerning the most precious right we have, the right to have our votes counted and tabulated under rules that give the voters confidence in the legitimacy of that system.

The "Help America Vote Act", mostly penned by disgraced house member Bob Ney, made sure voting machines would be rolled out across the nation. These machines have been proven in many legitimate studies to have security flaws, and have been exposed widely as being unacceptable in their present form.

Emergency legislation of the "Confidence in Vote Act of 2006" will help give the American public the option of knowing their vote will be counted this November and is endorsed by one of the backers of the original HAVA bill, Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT). Let's make sure this bill passes in a bipartisan vote now!

My profound, profound thanks to Senators Barbara Boxer and Chris Dodd and to the House sponsors. Knowing when it's broke, and when it's time for a fallback position, is putting the good of the country ahead of ego, and Chris Dodd deserves tremendous credit for acknowledging and accepting current realities in this responsible way.

My suggestion with regard to the Florida problem: perhaps an amendment could be written to mandate that all states must allow local jurisdictions to be able to choose whether or not to hand-count these special paper ballots, at their individual discretion. This would still leave the final decision up to each local election jurisdiction, while overriding heavy-handed statewide and state-implemented bans on such a necessary safeguard for ascertaining and verifying the consent of the governed.

Even as just a federally-permitted, federally-funded but unmandated option, this legislation should be extremely helpful if it can be passed this week. All election officials of good faith will leap at the chance to implement such a fail-safe option if funding is provided in time by the federal government. And those election officials who can't be bothered will no longer have any ground to stand on, and their local citizens will know exactly who to blame for a corrupted, failed or unrecountable election this November.

Larry Bergan - I hope to update that link with a link to the SoS Project where such an automated version will be available. They're in the process of changing their previous online email petition text from "please introduce it" to "please pass it now!" essentially.

We Count - The prob in Florida (amongst many) is not the hand-counting issue. At least not in regard to *this* legislation. (As you likely know, counting a ballot or even examining it in any part by hand if it's already been counted by machine is verboten in Florida). The problem concerning *this* legislation is that it's essentially illegal for jurisdictions to offer paper as an option if they have all DRE's. Even their PROVISIONAL ballots are ELECTRIC in such counties in Florida! And that includes counties covering 50% of the voting populace!

Thanks for the clarification, Brad. If there doesn't seem to be a workable, simple way around the "Florida Problem" I vote for sacrificing the Florida votes this fall, if it means saving most, or all, of the rest of the country's votes this November with this optional federal legislation as written. When the voters of Florida realize how they are being penalized by their state politicians, as compared to the rest of the country, heads should roll. But at least this year and next, the whole country shouldn't be held hostage by the low standards of the Banana Republic State of Florida, if their voters are forbidden by corrupt and authoritarian state leaders from voting on paper in any way, shape or form.

It was nice to have the actual name of a bill being sponsored when I called my senators and congressman. If we can just get this through, then we can start to pound our local officials with information.

There have been local stories about long lines because of the machines and this would definitely be an embarrasment to states that have those lines unnecassarily.

Ask your state officials if they would rather have a paper ballot or a red face this november!

Now if we could only get kos to send "the memo" that it is OK to talk about vote-fraud on the self-proclaimed "advertise liberally" (NOT!) superblogs. If they paid 1/8 the attention to this that they did to fitzmas and disney, we could actually work towards positive change.

This is great, great news! I am shocked & amazed... they actually LISTENED??! I'll certainly send a thank you to Boxer & Dodd but the lion's share of thanks goes to our hero, Brad!!!

Brad... seriously, have you considered running for office? You're so articulate, you know the issues so well, & you keep your cool while under fire from nutjobs without losing focus. You'd sure have MY vote!

I'm not sure if it's true all across florida but I believe anyone can vote absentee (even though those votes would be counted on an optical scanner). I live in Leon County and always vote absentee and... I have an election supervisor I trust (Ion Sancho). I suggest all voters in florida early vote by absentee ballot.

This is a Hand Counted Paper Ballots advocate's wet dream! I'm not surprised Barbera Boxer is leading the charge, but the Dodd inclusion is sheer brilliance. Now our job as HCPB advocates is to tell voters to PICK THE PAPER BALLOT and get press around how many people choose NOT to vote on insecure voting machines.

We can make Barbara look good by showing massive citizen support for this measure and getting PR around the citizens congratulating Boxer and Dodd for fixing a huge problem with the CITIZEN OWNED ELECTIONS.

Power to the people and thanks to brad and company for facilitating a major coup d'etat in both houses!!!

p.s. look for some Georgia municipalities to pass a resolution demanding the state to make paper ballots available regardless of whether this Senate resolution passes, showing that sometimes you can do things with grassroots activism and one on one lobbying at the lowest level of politics (the city council) that you can't get accomplished nationally and across the board. This is not an instead of , but an 'oh by the way' citizens can begin taking back their elections NOW on a city by city/ county by county basis.....

Here's a page Barbara Boxer's campaign just sent out a notice of that will contact your congress critters for you on this issue. Make sure to add a note that says this is urgent that this gets passed this week for it to work, since a lot of practical deadlines for voting training documents, etc., etc. are passing as we speak.

Joan, my birthday was on Monday the 25th, as was PDA's Mimi Kennedy's, who's also worked tirelessly on this issue, (saw that info by accident on a web page I was browsing the other night). A happy birthday present to all of us. Let's see that it passes!

If the margin is close, the absentee ballots will never be counted. The Republicans will simply send their candidate to Washington and have them sworn in, and the rest of the election (recounts, counting votes, etc.) is moot, and our only recourse is to challenge in the Republican-controlled House.

If too many anti-Republicans vote absentee, that just skews the election night numbers towards the Republicans and makes the CA-50 Theft Strategy easier to implement.

A paper ballot, transparently counted by hand, with totals announced at the local level. Our democracy needs nothing more and deserves nothing less.

I'm a bit puzzled about what the benefit is? Is this a way to nudge some jurisdictions into using all paper voting by giving them funding? If it might actually do that, even in one county, then maybe it's worthwhile, but I don't see it being promoted as a way to do that. It seems to be saying that just providing paper ballots to voters who want them is a good thing... but if some voters vote by machine, and some voters vote by paper, what's the benefit?

The machines can still screw up the count, even if every paper ballot is counted correctly. It doesn't help us know whether or not the machines screwed up the count, any more than we would if nobody voted by paper. It doesn't help us do a meaningful recount, any more than we could if nobody voted by paper. So... in what way does it help? What does it improve?

I've always supported partial solutions even if they weren't even close to everything I wanted... but I've supported them because they improve something. For example, having a voter-verifiable paper audit trail on a DRE is better than not having it, because we *can* re-count them, and because if the machines are giving erroneous paper trails chances are some voters will notice. It's not nearly as good as having hand recorded paper ballots, but it's a definite improvement over paperless touchscreen voting.

In this case, though, I'm trying to figure out how paying for optional paper ballots in jurisdictions that will still make machines the default choice, gives us any benefit.

Here's the way I see it. They seem to need to at make the total votes counted match the total number of voters registered. That's how they keep finding out that X number of people voted that were over the total registered.

Also there is always more accuracy at precincts where there are paper ballots. It shouldn't be too hard to convince every Democrat to vote on paper because of all the problems we've had over the last few years and the more ballots there are, the more worried someone who wishes to cheat will be.